requirement of the whole or a part of a college course as furnishing the desired preliminary training in the best way.

Meanwhile, however, the college course, toward the utilization of which for preliminary training the professional schools have been advancing, has in many institutions undergone a complete transformation. Twenty-five years ago it was a fairly stable aggregation of studies, which were pursued in a fixed order, and which, when viewed as a whole, were assumed to be both disciplinary and liberalizing. If a student having a college diploma entered a professional school, the diploma itself was an index of his preparation in respect to range as well as quality of work. But at present, such is the chaotic condition of many college curricula and so great is the freedom of choice offered to the student that the professional schools are confronted with a twofold difficulty. In the first place, they frequently make complaint that the students who now enter with a college diploma are not as a class so well able to carry the heavy and exacting work of the professional curriculum, which allows slight freedom of choice, as were the students who came up through the old college course of studies wholly or in large part prescribed,1 and, in the second place, the college curriculum has in many institutions so lost all semblance of unity and consistency that whether two years of college work, or the whole course, should be made a fixed requirement for admission to the professional school, it would be unsafe to assume that the student entering with such preliminary training had had any particular study (excepting elementary English) or had even learned how to study according to the professional standard.

1 Cf. pp. 85, 143–44.

The case of Latin and Greek in relation to professional studies is the same as that of mathematics and other more difficult subjects the "practical" bearing of which is not on the surface obvious, but of which the pursuit has been considered desirable as a part of a general education. It is already evident that professional competition in this country will be much more severe in the future than in the past; he who will serve the next generation acceptably as a lawyer, a physician, an engineer, or a clergyman must have an equipment superior to the average equipment of the present time. The question is not how the man of exceptional gifts may be made ready for his life work; it is rather by what process the average man who desires to study engineering, medicine, law, or theology may best be trained in preparation for the technical studies through which he will obtain his professional equipment.

The opinion was formerly prevalent that preparation for engineering studies should above all else emphasize mathematics and physics; for a medical course, chemistry and biology; and for a course in law, studies in history and economics. Now, upon second thought and in the light of experience, leaders in the field of professional education are agreed in the position that what is needed as a preparation to enter upon a technical course is a trained mind rather than a premature amassing of information along technical lines. "Let us have a trained man; we will give him the professional knowledge and skill," is a remark frequently made today. This throws the whole question of the preparation of prospective professional students into the domain of a general or, as many prefer to say, a liberal education.

The subject of preparation for professional courses is

too large to be entered upon here; and abundant testimony in regard to the place which the ancient classics should have in it is given in the following symposia. Men who have forgotten much of their Latin and Greek, and who find themselves handicapped by lack of technical knowledge, sometimes express the wish that they had spent upon professional subjects the time which they gave to the classics and mathematics, forgetting that without the power gained by the training of these basal subjects their command of technical data would be even less adequate. The trend of opinion, so far as it is definitely formulated, seems to be that, under present conditions, the prospective clergyman, lawyer, physician, and engineer should alike have an extended training in English, both language and literature; should have a year of "college" mathematics, part of the time being devoted to a brief review of the history of mathematics and a presentation of the relation of mathematics to other subjects; a course of "college" physics, biology, and either chemistry or geology, or both, it being understood that the science courses should be introductory in the larger sense, the subjects being presented in their relations to the sum of knowledge as well as in their fundamental principles; introductory courses in economics and philosophy; courses in French and German, with an opportunity to take work also in Spanish and Italian; one or two years of "college" history, articulated with the history of the schools; two years of "college" Latin; at least two years of "college" Greek for students looking forward to the study of theology, one or two years for prospective students of law and medicine, and a year of "college" Greek or additional pure mathematics for the prospective engineer.

The professions, except the ministry, are at the present time not suffering from a lack of candidates; the number of those preparing for medicine, law, and engineering is in excess of the present demand. In education the race is not to the swift; in rendering to society the service of developing an educated leadership the professional schools should remember that quality is of greater importance than numbers, and that one first-class man in any profession is of greater value to the world than many men of second or third rank. Though the advance of science in modern times has vastly increased the sum of knowledge, has opened up illimitable vistas and has effected changes in educational perspective, the enthusiasm of research should not blind us to the fact that the vast bulk of new knowledge, in the anthropological sciences as well as in the sciences of nature, is not well adapted for use in elementary or secondary or even collegiate training. No substitute has yet been found to take the place of Latin and Greek as educational instruments, not only for a general training but also for the training that looks forward to professional study.

IV

The teaching of Latin among us suffers from the same causes which affect the teaching of other subjects. These are, chiefly, on the one hand, lack of knowledge of Latin, lack of a clear perception of the aim of Latin study, and lack of a serious purpose in teaching; on the other hand, too many recitations in the day, the lack of books of reference and of illustrative material for the classroom, and, in the high schools, the nervous haste which comes from attempting to do in a given time more than can possibly be done well.

These defects are in part due to the fact that our secondary teaching is in no inconsiderable degree in the hands of young women without adequate preparation for their work, who engage in teaching as a makeshift, and either grace the schoolroom with their presence briefly on the way from the commencement stage to the altar or, if they remain for a period of years, continue to teach without an ambition for self-improvement. These must not be confused with the large class of conscientious teachers who are striving to do their work in the best way but whose acquaintance with Latin is so meager that they are handicapped at every step and turn to new "methods" of instruction as a drowning man clutches at a straw. Over against both these classes stands the large body of well-prepared and earnest teachers of Latin and Greek who are accomplishing results that are more than creditable when we take into account the disadvantages under which they labor in the lack of time for the proper doing of their work and in the lack of facilities. All honor to this loyal legion of classical teachers who, laboring often in a commercial or philistine atmosphere, have nevertheless retained their enthusiasm for sound scholarship, have constantly enlarged their horizon of knowledge, and have continued to be an inspiration and help to others.

Not a few of those who have failed to appreciate the value of the study of Latin and Greek think of these subjects as they were taught thirty or forty years ago by a certain class of schoolmasters who presented the Greeks and Romans as unearthly beings raised on a pedestal, before whom the modern world should fall down and worship; viewed their language as an intricate mechanism, and ground the student upon forms and constructions without